B. Chambers'  hopeful brand of sci-fi is still coming into its own here. This story, like most others of the author, centres around the interpersonal relationships of its space-diverse cast who maneuvers not only space politics but also each other's needs and wants. In this world, people have by and large all the emotional tools at hand they need to deal with the intricate mental and social challenges they encounter cooped up in their ship, and generally approach things like well-adjusted loveable adults with no bad bone in their body. With the exception of the Corbin character, everybody seems to have undergone a intense education of therapy and has their impulses under control. That's sometimes sweet to read but also just very easy - how did they obtain these competencies? Are they just more evolved socially? The same goes for the plot; obstacles are encounters, dealt with, and solved, lickity-split. Things just work out. 

However, this story is very much intended to be just that, a wholesome, cute, cozy space opera. That's not everybody's taste, but as long as its executed well, nothing wrong with it. 

What does detract from the quality is that because all characters seem to be fluent in therapy-speak, their voices sometimes become blurred. even characters conceptualised to be as distinctive as Kizzy or Lovey or Pei remain somewhat interchangeable with the rest. Equally, the priorities of the world building are  a bitt off to me; the Author's main interest seems to be the social interaction of species, how they view and tolerate each other on a personal level. Hence, the plot also mainly follows episodically each crew member's respective background. But that realm of social interaction should be structured and co-determined by economic contexts, political constellations, or sociological trends. Those latter dimensions I found a bit lackluster. ((Also, in yet another installment in the literary genre of The Author's Barely Disguised Kink, there's just a weird amount of pages dedicated to alien sex. But hey, no judging here)).
Finally, the writing style is nothing to write home about, the wonder of space travel, the loss of a crew member, and encountering alien markets and home worlds does not really penetrate the pages - even though the ideas behind each stage are sometimes interesting (the Cricket moon? Awesome). This should not worry the reader, as B. Chambers evolves to become an excellent writer of prose in later works.